Jia: A Novel of North Korea (15 page)

Jaeho whined, "I have to get up early tomorrow. I can't
sleep with all this talk."

Gun lay down next to his uncle and talked all night
long in a low voice about his family's life in China. His
uncle tried not to miss a single word. Whenever Gun mentioned his father, his uncle sobbed. Gun decided not to tell
him about his father's foot, which had been almost useless
since he had stepped on a piece of glass while crossing the
river. Though they were able to extract the piece of glass and disinfect his foot, the wound wouldn't heal, and it
continued to cause his father pain. They couldn't find any
medicine and were too afraid to ask for help.

Gun and his uncle fell asleep at dawn and didn't hear
Jaeho leave. Gun slept a long and deep sleep.

He woke to someone shaking his body violently.

Gun saw that he was surrounded by soldiers. Something
was wrong. He tried to stand up right away, but they kicked
at his ribs, and he rolled over in pain.

"Get up, national traitor! You are not worthy of sleeping in this house. Get your butt off the floor." Two soldiers
held Gun's arms and pulled him along by force. He was led
out of his uncle's house as they kicked him in the abdomen,
the calves, his head. How did they know? Had he slept too
long? Had someone seen him sneak into the house?

A square-faced soldier ordered the others to stop kicking him, and a truncheon came down on him, hitting him
hard in the right thigh.

"Get up! Don't exaggerate the pain." The square-faced
soldier swatted at Gun with the truncheon.

Gun could barely raise himself. He had witnessed this
scene so often in his dreams. Didn't someone say dreams
implied the opposite of what would really happen?

He stood up, shaking, and his uncle and aunt came into
sight. His uncle's tear-filled eyes were fearful, but his aunt
avoided Gun's face. One soldier pulled his hand behind him
and another fastened handcuffs on his wrists.

"He hasn't eaten anything yet today," his uncle said, approaching the square-faced soldier and appealing to him.

The soldier scowled. "What did you say? Did you say
you want to feed that national traitor?"

Gun's uncle shrank back in fear.

"Did you receive something from him?" the soldier demanded.

"No, nothing..." Gun's aunt answered.

"If we find something in your house, your family will
be punished like him. Understood?" The soldier stared at
them, brandishing the truncheon liberally. "Where is your
son? According to him, your family isn't related to this reactionary element's family."

Gun didn't understand this. What did this mean? No,
he decided not to understand what the soldier was saying, what this meant. The soldier turned back to Gun and
smiled, watching him in silence. Then he held the truncheon to Gun's face and whispered in his ear, "Welcome
back to North Korea." He pointed at the other soldiers with
his truncheon. "Take him to the car," he ordered.

The soldiers rushed toward him and dragged him into
the back of an army car. They got in and sat around him.

Gun could hear his uncle protesting. "General, he must
have been influenced by some reactionary elements-he
has never disobeyed the rules, he was a model for his factory!"

The square-faced soldier addressed his men, ignoring
the pleas of Gun's uncle. "Search the whole house. If you
find something, report it to me later. We must go."

"Gun! Gun!" his uncle shouted. Gun didn't look back.
His uncle cried, "This is my fault. I shouldn't have asked
you to stay here overnight. How can I face my brother in
the other world? This is my fault! "

As the car pulled away, Gun realized he had forgotten
to tell to his uncle about the medicine. He had to take the
medicine twice a day, not three times, like medicine in
North Korea. Chinese medicine was much stronger.

un was thrown into a cell already overflowing with
prisoners. He looked around the cell and realized he
had been dragged into an underground prison. He had
heard about these places, deep in the mountains: he had
heard that people sent to them never returned. Runaways
to China lived in fear of being caught by the Chinese police, handed over to the North Korean police, and sent to
one of these prisons.

Most prisoners crouched and bowed their heads, just
looking at the ground. The smell of urine filled the air, and
nausea overcame Gun as he approached a woman whose
chin was resting on her chest. She was slumped on the floor,
and looked more like a corpse than a human being, her
enormous belly dwarfing her tiny head. "That bitch pees
more than five times a day on that spot. She can't even wait until toilet time. I can't stand it anymore," one man complained, looking at Gun.

"What's wrong with her?" Gun asked. No wonder there
was space around her. An old woman stared at the grumbling man and said, "Don't talk like that. Pregnant women
have to go to the restroom more frequently because of the
baby's pressure."

"Who wants a baby now!" the man sneered. "Besides,
her baby's butt has two different cheeks: one from China
and the other from here. It must be deformed." Some of the
men around him smirked.

A policeman kicked at the iron bars. "Cut it out, national traitors! Do you fucking bastards want me to stop
your laughing?"

The pregnant woman didn't seem to care how people
talked about her; she didn't raise her head or move at all.
Gun couldn't help but sit next to her, as finding another
place to lie down in the cell was impossible.

He wondered what Sun was doing at that moment. She
must blame me, he thought. Why didn't I leave as soon as
I delivered the medicine to my uncle? What about Jaeho?
Was he afraid the police would raid his house and arrest
everyone for harboring a traitor? If Jaeho hadn't said anything, nobody would have known; Gun could have said
farewell to his uncle and his family, safely crossed the river,
and started looking for Sun. Jaeho's betrayal seemed coldhearted; if it was revenge for Gun's leaving without telling
him, it was too cruel.

A policeman opened the door of the prison cell abruptly.
"Hey, new guy! Come out." When Gun looked up toward
the voice, three men were standing behind the policeman.
Together they dragged Gun to another room, similar in size to the cell, though its emptiness made it feel much bigger and colder. A yellowish, umbrella-shaped light hung
from the middle of the ceiling-the only decoration. Directly under it, in a chair, sat the square-faced soldier who
had arrested him, with his legs crossed, smoking. Gun felt
a chill that sank to the marrow of his bones; whether from
the cold or from the man's vicious smile, he didn't know.
He decided instantly that the fastest way out was to acquiesce. He stood at attention before his interrogator.

"We investigated you and your family's history thoroughly. Up to now you've had no problems with the government, and yet you chose to destroy everything. How was
China? Was crossing the border worth betraying your country?" Gun's interrogator waved his cigarette back and forth.

Gun said nothing; there was nothing to say. He wondered how many times a day that man examined runaways,
and how much information they must beat out of each one.
It frightened him. The square-faced man seemed uninterested in any answers Gun might provide; he just kept
smoking. Gun didn't raise his eyes.

Back in the cell, Gun was lying on the floor when he felt
warm water spread underneath him. It felt so good; he
wanted to take off his clothes and soak his whole body in it.
When he opened his eyes, he realized that it had come from
between the pregnant woman's legs. He met her eyes and
she smiled, though her face was filled with shame. "Sorry,"
she said in a low voice, but Gun didn't complain. In fact, he
didn't care. The smell of urine didn't bother him anymore.

Gun was dragged back to the room again the next day and
beaten by the same men, the same way. They weren't even trying to extract information from him, and after a while
he didn't feel pain anymore; his body had swelled to almost
three times its normal size. All he heard, all day, was "national traitor." When Gun was returned to the cell after a
day of beatings, other prisoners consoled him, saying, "It's
just the first step. We all passed it, and it'll be over soon. Just
hang on a little longer."

What had he done? Gun had been a good citizen in
North Korea: never disobeyed the law, never went against
the order of the government-in fact, he was the most enthusiastic member of the Propaganda Department in the
factory where he worked. He hadn't crossed the border to
betray his country; he just wanted to make a living and not
starve to death. More important than that, he didn't want
his parents to starve to death. He had waited for the government to help them, he had believed the government would
do something, but nothing had happened. The situation
only got worse, until crossing the river was the only way.

The pregnant woman fed Gun the rice-and-corn soup
they were given, because he was bound and couldn't hold
a spoon himself. The soup was thin, but it helped restore
energy to his injured body.

"How old are you?" he asked one day, as she put a
spoonful to his mouth.

Her face turned red and she responded, hesitantly, "Seventeen."

"How did you become pregnant at such a young age?"
Gun asked the question despite himself.

She fed him another spoonful, looking into his face.
"When I got over to China with my father the first time,
he sold me to a Chinese plan. But it was for me-he did
it for me." She put the spoon in the bowl and went on, "I was actually happy over there. People blame my father,
but I don't care; my Chinese husband was really nice. We
couldn't communicate very well-sometimes we needed
his Korean-Chinese friend or neighbor-but the language
barrier didn't cause too much trouble." She spoke softly, so
others couldn't hear.

"He was fifteen years older than me, and very poor. To
buy me, he spent almost all of the money he had saved, but I
never missed a meal; he always tried to feed me well. When
I got pregnant, we didn't know what to do. We were so
happy, but we were afraid because we knew we shouldn't
have children. His friends had warned us that a pregnancy
would risk my safety, but we weren't cautious enough. If the
Chinese government found out I was from North Korea, I
would be dragged back here. We knew we had to give up
the baby, and walking to the hospital, we cried bitterly in
the street, holding hands. Some policemen happened to pass
us-two blubbering adults holding hands, who wouldn't notice? We were so ignorant. They asked what had happened. I
panicked and started to run, but they caught me. When they
found out who I was, they sent me here. My husband tried
to have me released, but the poor man has no power."

She caressed her belly. "I saved my baby, but I lost my
husband."

Gun looked at her belly. He wanted to ask her whether
she had seen Sun in her village. Sun could easily be in a
similar situation, but he couldn't bear to imagine it. He bit
his lower lip hard. No! Asking such questions would only
bring bad fortune.

Gun was plagued by nightmares. In one he saw Sun, her
naked body in chains, suspended from a big brick wall. She struggled to cut the chains, but if she cut one, another came
out of the brick and bound her more tightly. She was crying out and bleeding, but as she wriggled, the chains pulled
her into the wall. She called for Gun over and over; it felt so
real. He could feel his breath quicken, watching her desperately, unable to reach her as she was gradually sucked into
the brick. In the end, her whole body was engulfed; the
brick wall turned so peaceful and shiny, with no scars on its
brown face.

Sometimes, the dreams were happier. Sun would smile,
wearing her bright, pretty hatibok, as she walked arni in arm
with a man in Chinese clothes. They looked so intimate and
were always walking away. Whenever he had those dreams,
Gun woke up in a cold sweat. He didn't like either one.

On the eighth day of Gun's incarceration, he was given
two meals of corn, along with salty water and cabbage, and
sent to another prison cell. There, he found four men seated, one in each corner. They all seemed to be around his
age, but they looked like half-wits. They were eerily quiet;
he could hardly hear them breathe. Gun wandered around
the room for a while and finally sat in the center of the
room. No one spoke. Since they all had the same stories of
torture to tell, there was no point in sharing them.

It was a new setting, but the investigators asked the same
questions, and Gun gave the same answers. They beat him
for yet another week. He had to kneel down on the ground,
and his hands were tied behind his back so that he couldn't
move. That was the daily routine. Beginning early in the
morning, they kicked his face and his body, and sent him
back to the cell at night. They gave him a spoon without a
handle, so he wouldn't commit suicide or make a weapon.
He was never allowed to wash, and soon enough he was giving off the same smell as the prisoners he first met. He
wondered about the pregnant girl, but there was no way to
find out what happened to her.